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A deal to sell pizzas for 23 cents ended up as pie in the face for Papa John's yesterday.

The offer, intended to remedy a franchisee's insult to Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James
(No. 23), resulted in closed stores, long lines and angry customers after stores became overwhelmed
by the demand. Police were called to help control the crowds at some outlets.

"It's total chaos," said Ann Marie Buswell, 33, a social worker who got her pizza at the Hudson
Avenue store after waiting an hour and a half.

At noon, an hour after opening, that store locked its doors, stopped taking orders and attempted
to serve only the customers waiting. A store employee tried to calm the crowds by simply handing
out free pizzas.

By the end of the day, all Columbus-area stores appeared to have closed. A sign on some read:
"All Columbus stores sold out."

The Louisville, Ky.-based pizza chain offered the cheap pies after a Washington, D.C., store
operator printed T-shirts calling James a "crybaby." The operator did that during the Cavs'
first-round playoff series against Washington.

The 23-cent, one-topping pizzas were meant to be offered all day at 86 stores in the Cleveland,
Akron, Toledo, Youngstown and Columbus areas. (The pies normally sell for $11.99.) The chain said
proceeds from the promotion would go to the Cavaliers Youth Fund and the LeBron James Family
Foundation.

Columbus-area franchisees went to Pittsburgh to get more supplies after learning of the
promotion a few days ago, said Charles Burris, operating partner with the Columbus Papa John's
franchise.

But by early afternoon, Burris acknowledged that the stores would run out of food before the end
of the day, despite doing "everything to execute as well as we can."

Demand became apparent long before stores opened at 11 a.m.

"It was nuts in the beginning," said Kandice Greeley, a driver at the Sullivant Avenue store.
"When I came in at 9 a.m. the phones were ringing off the hook."

By early afternoon, a line snaked out of the door and into the West Side parking lot jammed with
cars as women with strollers, kids on bikes and elderly customers stood in line. Shortly after 3
p.m., those waiting were issued numbers for the last pizzas to be sold for the day because the
restaurant had run out of supplies.

At least three police officers arrived at the store to maintain order.

Jennifer Gunn, a West Side homemaker, stood in line with her 3-year-old niece, Makenzi, who also
planned to buy a pizza but was not allowed to by the store. Gunn had hoped to walk away with two
pizzas to feed her family of eight.

"It's hard to feed your family with food prices going up," she said. But Gunn, who orders from
Papa John's at least once a month, said she'll never return.

In suburban Cleveland, people stood wrapped in blankets outside a store in Westlake, and the
line was two blocks long in University Heights.

"I did it for the principle of it. The principle of it is he's not a crybaby and Papa John's
should not have gotten into it," Jennie Moore, 54, of University Heights, said as she waited for a
pepperoni pizza.

H. Rao Unnava, a professor of marketing at Ohio State University, said Papa John's made a bad
situation worse by not fully considering how to implement the promotion.

"This kind of pricing is bound to cause demand that was so high that no store, operationally
making pizzas that take at least 10 minutes each, could ever meet. An apology would have been
sufficient, and they went overboard."

Burris said managers planned to meet last night to discuss a promotion for customers who missed
out.

Meanwhile, Columbus police were patrolling some of the Papa John's late last night to make sure
no one vandalized them. A special-duty officer was at the Hudson location and watched as would-be
customers kept driving up, hoping for a cheap pizza.